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ABOUT THE CRIME

"The women cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women was alive or dead. We were the emperor's soldiers. No matter in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance."

( From the confession of a former Japanese soldier, Yasuji Kaneko. )

Japanese soldiers waiting in a line to enter the 'Comfort House'.

"Comfort Women" is an euphemism for women working in military brothels, especially those women who were forced into prostitution as a form of sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. Around 200,000 women are estimated to have been involved and according to some Chinese scholars, this number could go up to 410,000, but the exact numbers are still being researched and debated. Historians and researchers have stated that the majority of comfort women were from China, Korean, Japan and Philippines, but women from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, and other Japanese-occupied territories were also found in "comfort stations". Comfort stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, Thailand, Burma, New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, and was then French Indochina.

Japanese soldiers and a comfort woman.

Young women from countries under Japanese Imperial control were reported being abducted from their homes. In some cases, women were also recruited with fake offers stated as military work. It has been documented that the Japanese military itself recruited women by force. However, some Japanese scholars, such as historian Ikuhiko Hata, deny that there was organized forced recruitment of comfort women by the Japanese government or military. It is estimated that only 25 percent of the comfort women survived and that most were unable to have children as a result of multiple rapes or sexual disease they received. Beatings and physical torture were said to be common.

Several comfort women. One of them was pregnant.

Ten Dutch women were taken by force from prison camps in Java by officers of the Japanese Imperial Army and were to made sex slaves in February 1944. They were systematically beaten and raped day and night in a so called "Comfort Station". As a victim of the incident, Jan Ruff-O'Hearn testified to a U.S. House of Representatives committee: "Many stories have been told about the horrors, brutalities, suffering and starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps, but one story was never told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights abuse committed by the Japanese during World War II: The story of the “Comfort Women”, the jugun ianfu, and how these women were forcibly seized against their will, to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army, in the so-called "Comfort Station". I was beaten and raped day and night. Even the Japanese doctor raped me each time he visited the brothel to examine us for venereal diseases."

Comfort women forced to take naked pictures.

Although they were returned to the prison camps within three months upon protest of the Dutch prisoners against the Imperial Army, the Japanese officers were not punished by Japanese authorities until the end of the war. After the end of the war, 11 Japanese officers were declared guilty with one sentenced to death by the Batavia War Criminal Court. It was decided that the crime was not organized by the Army and that those who raped violated the Army’s order to hire only voluntary women. Some victims from East Timor testified they were forced to conduct sexual activities when they were not old enough to have started menstruating and were repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers. Among those girls, some were executed when they refused to comply.